Twine Version: 2.5.1
Story Format: Harlowe 3
Hi everyone!
Super new to Twine, not a big coder but kinda familiar with HTML and CSS because of my job. Currently using the newest desktop version of Twine (2.5.1) and whatever the newest version of Harlowe 3 that’s included by default with it.
In the game I’m working on, there’s going to be some more exposition/backstory-heavy sections that players could click through and read to get some background, but I also wanted to provide links to skip to the next important passage if they didn’t feel like getting too much into the nuts and bolts. For the sake of natural language and readability, I wanted to set those links to only be visible when a certain variable is set to ‘true’, but remove those links when that variable is set to ‘false’, since the ‘skip’ options will occasionally contain alternate dialogue, etc that wouldn’t make sense if you’ve already started reading the exposition.
Now, I’ve figured out how to make passage links visible only when a certain variable is true or false, but what I don’t like is the big whitespace left behind when passage links are made visible or invisible depending on conditions. I’ve spent the last hour or so googling around for an answer to remove empty whitespace in passages, but they’re either not quite the answer I need, not compatible with Harlowe, or some combination of the two.
Does anyone have a suggestion? I’ve tried adding curly brackets but it didn’t seem to do anything (unless I was formatting it wrong, which is very likely), and I wasn’t quite sure if maybe the (show) or (replace) macros were going to help at all. As of right now, the code with the variables & passages just looks like this (for a passage where two characters board an elevator, and the player can either see some optional dialogue or just jump ahead):
(if: $skipElevator is true)[[Skip it, I'm only here for the scholarship!]]
(if: $skipElevator is false)[[Proceed to Professor Kaznowski's office.->Here we are: Professor Kaznowski's office!]]
Thanks much!!